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Trilogy Tidings
October 2014 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
I'm kinda fed up with new smartphones, wearables, and other consumer gadgets that I cannot imagine being useful (other than claiming membership in a cool fan club). I'm focused on medtech, so I wonder what all these new gadgets might mean for the improvement of delivering care to patients and making clinicians more effective. I have reached some conclusions ...
Regards, Joe
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What Will the Apple Watch Mean for Healthcare?
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In two words, not much.
Like earlier attempts at so-called wearable technology, the Apple Watch will presumably allow you to monitor your physiology to some degree and perform other mundane Internet-related tasks (if you also carry an iPhone). Someday it may allow you to charge your clinic co-pay using the device on your wrist. The hypesters love it. It will surely sell to the Apple faithful and other early adopters. Time will tell whether it turns out to be more commercially successful than the many earlier "wearable" offerings. In any event, it will be yet another distraction that retards interpersonal interactions.
But none of that matters to me because I don't plan to buy and use an Apple Watch. What does matter to me is the value such a device might bring to the improvement of healthcare. My short answer: Not much.
In my view the new Watch is not a significant healthcare innovation. Let me explain. By contrast, here are a few potential developments that really would represent a significant healthcare innovation:
- A neurological device that would mitigate excruciating, intractable pain or tremors for sufferers of chronic disease
- A product that would decrease OR time by 50% for a common surgical procedure
- A software product that would greatly ease EHR data entry requirements and increase the actual face time that a physician could spend with each patient
- A genetic lab test that could identify an optimal drug and dosage regimen to treat a common life-threatening disease
- A diagnostic database to guide physicians in challenging diagnoses based upon "big data" coupled to a patient's EHR
- Anything that substantially reduces medical errors or societal healthcare costs
Don't get me wrong. Incremental advances are fine. They make the medtech world go around. But we should never take our eyes off the prize of major advances in the delivery of care.
So the Apple Watch is fine for tech savvy gadgeteers. But let's not go nutty extoling its historic healthcare attributes. It does not measure up.
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